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‘AJC’ A PROPAGANDA MACHINE AT WORK

David Harris, as Executive Director of the AJC (American Jewish Committee), has been the organization’s leading spokesman.  In short, he has been their chief propagandist in America for Israel.

By Paul Balles –  My Catbird Seat – October 25, 2010

A few days ago, Robert Elman, President of the American-Jewish Committee (AJC), published a letter praising David Harris, executive director of the AJC.

The AJC (American-Jewish Committee),  boasts that it has worked since 1906 to safeguard Jewish life and to protect the dignity of all people.

In that motto alone, the thinking reader must see a dichotomy, a contradiction that casts doubt on what the organization represents.

If the AJC (American-Jewish Committee) has worked to “safeguard Jewish life”, it cannot honestly claim to protect the dignity of all people in the same breath, under which lays its treatment of Palestinians.

David Harris, as Executive Director of the AJC, has been the organization’s leading spokesman.  In short, he has been their chief propagandist in America for Israel.

A closer look at Elman’s letter reveals how Harris and the AJC have used their propaganda machine to brainwash America.

In praising Harris for his 20 years of service as AJC Executive Director, Elman says:

“No single professional has epitomized AJC’s values, vision, activism, humanitarianism and achievement more than David Harris. David has been hailed as one of the Jewish people’s foremost advocates and most distinguished and eloquent spokesmen.”

Elman adds, “Looking to the future, David will continue to advocate for the issues most important to the Jewish people…”

Here are the mythical issues Elman attributes to Harris. Each has an element of propaganda in it:

Supporting a democratic Israel in its quest for peace and security.

Israel’s claims to be democratic are belied by its treatment of the Israeli Arabs as lesser members of an apartheid state.

Its so-called “quest for peace and security” has been proven to be nothing more than sound-bites for peace and military hardware for security.

Speaking out against Iran’s mission to build nuclear weapons.

This is an outright lie similar to the lie about Iraq having WMDs aimed at Israel. There’s not a shred of proof that Iran’s nuclear development involves weapons.

Building mutual respect between different religious and ethnic groups, leading to a more tolerant world.

Instead of working toward mutual respect, Israel has done everything possible to breed animosity.

Moving America towards energy independence — critical for both our national security and our environment.

In other words, cut American dependence on foreign oil, thereby diminishing positive relationships with Arab oil-producing countries.

Seeking a world in which all people are afforded human rights, human dignity and human freedom.

Before anyone can believe this Goebbels type rubbish, Israel will have to vastly upgrade its relationships with the Palestinians.

Three themes run through most Zionist propaganda:

  • 1.  Brainwash the public into believing that Arabs are devils and all Moslems are extremist bombers.

Professor Jack Shaheen’s in-depth studies of American films thoroughly establish how Arabs have been consistently vilified in that medium for a century.

  • 2.  Convince the public to believe it’s a hate crime to criticise Israel, while propagating guilt for the holocaust.

Criticism of Israel in America is a guaranteed route to castigation as anti-Semitic at best and unemployment, like Helen Thomas’s, at worst.

  • 3. Instil fear in Jews and their supporters that others are out to destroy Israel and Jews. “Israel is surrounded by enemies,” writes Steven Rosen. If true, why?

This theme ignores Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.  More importantly, it overlooks the fact that Israel thrives on keeping Syria and Lebanon as antagonists and Iran as a threat.  The propaganda device maintains unrestrained American support.

AJC (American-Jewish Committee), propaganda does more harm than good.  Israel needs healthy criticism from Jews in America and around the world.

Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years.  He’s a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News.  Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

October 25, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

French strike costing €400mn daily

Press TV – October 25, 2010

France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has warned that the country’s massive strikes are costing the French economy up to 400 million euros a day.

Lagarde said on Monday that the economic cost is between 200 million euro (£178 million) and 400 million euro (£356 million) every day the unions call for strikes protesting the pension reform law, the Associated Press reported. The French minister added that the media images showing street battles between the anti-riot police and protesters have damaged the country’s image. She warned that strikes against French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reform have threatened to derail France’s still fragile economic recovery.

“Today, we shouldn’t be weighing down this recovery with campaigns that are painful for the French economy and very painful for a certain number of small and medium-sized businesses,” Lagarde noted.

Ongoing protests and strikes against the government’s pension reforms have led to fuel shortages and travel chaos throughout the country. A quarter of the country’s gas stations have run dry due to strikes at refineries and blockades of fuel depots by the protesters.

The strikers are hoping the disruptions will finally force Sarkozy’s government to cancel a plan to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62. But the government insists that the reform is necessary to reduce the country’s budget deficit.

The French Senate voted Friday to pass the proposed pension reform, which is expected to win final approval this week.

A recent opinion poll shows Sarkozy’s approval rating has sunk to a record low of 29 percent. The latest polls have also shown that a vast majority of the French people support the walkout.

October 25, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Jeffery Blankfort: Israel Is The Most Immediate Threat To The Future Of The Planet

Kourosh Ziabari | October 25, 2010

Jeffrey Blankfort is an American photojournalist, radio producer and Middle East analyst. He currently hosts radio programs on KZYX in Mendocino, CA and KPOO in San Francisco. Blankfort was formerly the editor of the Middle East Labor Bulletin and co-founder of the Labor Committee of the Middle East. In February 2002, he won a lawsuit against the Zionist organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which was found to have been spying on the American citizens critical of Israel and its expansionist policies.

Jeffrey joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the influence of the Israeli lobby on the decision-makers of the U.S. government, Israel’s illegal, underground nuclear program, the prospect of Israeli – Palestinian conflict and the imminent threat of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Blankfort is quite outspoken in his criticism of the apartheid regime of Israel and believes that Israel is the most immediate threat to the future of our planet.

Kourosh Ziabari: In your article “The Israel Lobby and the Left: Uneasy Questions”, you elaborately explore the dominance of the Israeli lobby over the U.S. administration and cite good examples of the influence of well-off Zionists on multinational companies and mainstream media in America. My question is, what are the root causes of this enormous power and immense wealth which the Zionists have possessed?

How did the Jews take over the vast resources of power and money that have made them capable of framing, modifying and overturning the political equations in the United States?

Jeffrey Blankfort: That question requires a long and complicated answer. In short, an important, well organized segment of the American Jewish community emerged after World War II that has been dedicated to the establishment and prospering of a Jewish state in historic Palestine in which the lives and well being of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs were of no consequence.

That this segment did not and has never represented the majority of American Jews has been more than made up for by its concerted activity on Israel’s behalf in every critical sector of U.S. society and at every level of the nation’s political life. Its success would not have been possible, however, were it not for the fact that within its ranks have been a sizeable number of wealthy Jewish businessmen who have been quite willing to expend the funds necessary to either purchase the support of the U.S. Congress as well as virtually all of the state legislatures or intimidate Israel’s would-be critics into silence.

KZ: In your articles, you’ve alluded to the conflicts and struggles between the U.S. and Israeli administrations during the past decades in which the U.S. Presidents, starting from Richard Nixon, tried to curb the expansionist policies of Israel and bring about an improved living condition for the oppressed nation of Palestine. Should you believe that there have been such efforts on the side of the U.S. administration, what has led to their failure, having in mind that they’ve repeatedly proclaimed their commitment to the security of Israel?

 

JB: There has not been the slightest interest on the part of any US president, I suspect, in improving the living conditions for the Palestinians. Halting Israeli expansion and getting Tel Aviv to withdraw from all the territories it conquered in 1967 has been seen as being in the U.S. national interest.

All the past efforts have failed because none of the presidents have been willing to spend the domestic political capital that would be necessary to force an Israeli withdrawal and particularly so when they know their efforts will be opposed by the overwhelming majority of both houses of Congress irrespective of party affiliations as well as by the Zionist dominated media.

The only one who made a serious effort and who was willing to confront the Zionist network and Congress was George Bush Sr., when he denied Israel its request for $10 billion in loan guarantees in 1991 and again in 1992 but even he was eventually forced to surrender.

KZ: Israelis are used to employing the anti-Semitism label to defame and vilify whoever dares criticize their belligerent, aggressive policies and actions. They accuse whoever criticizes them of being anti-Semitic. This makes the politicians and opinion-makers hesitant and demoralized in talking of Israel negatively. Is there any solution to reveal the futility of the anti-Semitism label and educate the public that criticism of Israel is different from criticizing Judaism?

 

JB: The allegation of “anti-Semitism” leveled against critics of Israel does not carry the weight it once did but it still is extremely effective, particularly, when the accused is employed by the mainstream media as we have seen recently in the case of Helen Thomas, Octavia Nasr and Rick Sanchez, and in the film industry which has long been a Zionist bastion and which was brought into existence by Jews in the last century, although none at the time were Zionists.

The power of the accusation of anti-Semitism to bring public figures to their knees will continue to exist until there is a sufficient number of prominent Americans who are willing to challenge it. When that will be I won’t begin to speculate.

KZ: Although undeclared, it’s confirmed by the Federation of American Scientists that Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads. Being a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel has never allowed the IAEA to probe into its nuclear arsenal. We already know about the destiny of Mordecai Vanunu who swapped his freedom for the expression of truth. What’s your viewpoint about the destiny of Israel’s nuclear program? Will Tel Aviv continue enjoying immunity from responsibility?

 

JB: As long as the Zionist support network controls Congress and as long as no American president has the courage to even mention the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons, and while the U.S. continues to hold the purse strings to the UN, Israel will continue to enjoy both immunity and impunity. Had the leadership of the now non-existent anti-nuclear movement in the US, like the “peace movement”, not been also Zionist-dominated, there might have been some debate on the issue but, because it was [non-existent], the subject was considered off limits.

KZ: Let’s turn to Iran. Iran’s is being portrayed by the U.S. mainstream media in a distorted and hypocritical way. Many Americans, who hadn’t even heard the name of Iran before, are now exposed to a horrifying and dreadful image of the country presented to them by the Zionist-led media outlets. They aren’t aware of the historical civilization of Iran and its unique cultural and social features. How is it possible to unveil the concealed realities of Iran for the Americans who don’t find the proper opportunities to become familiar with a misrepresented Iran?

 

JB: Most Americans would have a problem finding Iran or any other country in the Middle East, or for that matter, anywhere in the world on a map. They are, for the most part, what can be called “geographically challenged,” as well as historically challenged. There is no antidote to that on the horizon which is why Washington is able to get away with making war on countries and peoples that have never done them harm. If there was a military draft as there was during the Vietnam War, neither the war in Iraq or Afghanistan would have gone on as long as they have and there would be opposition to an attack on Iran.

When Nixon cleverly halted the draft of 18-year olds in the early 70s, that took the backbone out of the anti-war movement and that is the reason that as hard pressed as the U.S. is today to maintain an army large enough to fight multiple wars, Washington will not bring back the draft. Hiring private contractors became the alternative. Without the fear of 18-year olds that they will be taken into the army, there is no anti-war movement and there is none worthy of the name at this moment in the United States.

KZ: Many people around the world have come to believe that the media in the US have unrestricted freedom and can express whatever they want, without any impediment or obstruction imposed on them by the administration. It’s almost accurate to say that the US government doesn’t have any direct involvement in media-related affairs; however, there seems to be an implicit pressure on the media not to cross the red lines and violate unwritten laws, including the criticism of Israel. Can you elaborate on this more precisely?

 

JB: It is not the government that prevents criticism from Israel in the media but fear of the repercussions that are guaranteed to follow any genuine criticism be it written or in cartoon form in the U.S. media, even when that criticism is leveled by a Jewish journalist. There are several organizations, most prominently the Anti-Defamation League, CAMERA, and HonestReporting which are able to unleash at a moment’s notice a torrent of emails and letters to the editor, and in certain cases, visits to the offices of an offending newspaper, to make sure those in the media know what they can and cannot write. Since there is no corresponding pressure from Israel’s critics in the public, most editors choose to avoid a fight.

There was a time when a number of columnists in the mainstream press did write critically of Israel and got away with it. But that was 20 years ago and they are no longer around.

KZ: As the final question, what’s your prediction for the future of Israel? Will it continue to determine the U.S. foreign policy and rule the American politicians? Is it capable of maintaining the blockade of Gaza? After all, will Israel succeed in surviving politically?

 

JB: As long as Israel’s supporters, or agents in the U.S., are able to control the U.S. Congress and intimidate whoever happens to be president and as long as those same forces dominate the media there will be no change in the US or in the situation in Gaza. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, while slowly growing in the US, does not have the intensity that it has elsewhere and its targets are limited to what Israeli and US companies do in the West Bank so, realistically, there is unlikely to be any meaningful pressure coming from the US.

What Israel does, however, may produce changes that are unpredictable at the moment. Having twice been defeated by Hezbollah, Israeli officials keep threatening another war on Lebanon and since the US, Europe and the UN have let them get away with all their previous wars on Lebanon, they are likely to try again.

Unlike the Palestinians, the Lebanese are able and willing to aggressively fight back as the Israeli soldiers know all too well, from their resistance to occupation and their halting of the vaunted Israeli wehrmacht in 2006. Should Israel find a way to attack Iran, the repercussions from that might be sufficient to send Israel on the road to what will ultimately be viewed as self-destruction. At the moment, thanks to the unconditional backing by the US for all it crimes, and given its arsenal of nuclear weapons, I consider Israel to be the most immediate threat to the future of the planet.

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and interviewer.

October 25, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | 3 Comments

Report: Mossad behind blast at Iran base

Ma’an – 25/10/2010

BETHLEHEM — Mossad was behind a blast at an Iranian military base on 12 October that killed 18 Iran Revolutionary Guards and injured 14 others, Israeli Hebrew-language news site Enyan Merkazi reported Monday.

According to the news site, Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, recruited Iranian agents who penetrated an ammunition storage area in the top-secret base in the city of Khoramabad, 500 kilometers southwest of the capital, Tehran.

The news site reported that Iran’s Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers were stored in the arms depot, “stocked for striking Israel in the event of war.”

The Iranian government-backed IRNA news agency reported that the blast was caused by a fire that had reached the storage area, with most news sites saying the explosion was an accident.

A day after, Iranian MP Reza Rahiminasab told The Tehran Times that the blast was not a “terrorist incident.”

“Other reports about the incident are rumors and should not be heeded,” he added.

Reports of Israel’s involvement in the blast follow the airing of footage of a nuclear reactor in the Galilee, marking the first time Israel’s nuclear facilities have been openly broadcast to the public.

October 25, 2010 Posted by | War Crimes | Leave a comment

Photos of Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinian detainees disclosed

Occupation soldier leaves threat: “we will be back”
Press TV – October 25, 2010

Israeli troops have abused Palestinian detainees during the 2008-2009 attack on the Gaza Strip, new photos released by a rights group show.

The photos were published on Monday by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group of veteran combat soldiers who collect testimonies and photos of troops who have served in the occupied territories.

One picture shows a soldier pointing his assault rifle at the face of a blindfolded Palestinian detainee.

Other images show soldiers smiling and posing inside what appears to be Palestinian homes and in one picture a woman in a headscarf is cooking at a stove.

Yehuda Shaul, a founding member of Breaking the Silence, said the group has received dozens of similar pictures that point to a widespread phenomenon.

“It’s the norm in the Israeli military and it’s a direct consequence of being in a place where you control and rule civilians on a daily basis,” he said.

“You become corrupt, and you are not able any more to see them as human beings like you,” he added.


Blindfolded and bound Palestinian girl on her knees with four Israeli soldiers pointing their guns and laughing provocatively

The Israeli military would not immediately comment on the photos.

The Israeli military launched a deadly assault on the beleaguered Gaza Strip at the turn of 2009, killing at least 1,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Photos – IMEMC
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October 25, 2010 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 7 Comments

Israeli cabinet endorses law making judaizing Jerusalem a national priority

Ma’an – 24/10/2010

TEL AVIV — Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday backed a bill to define Jerusalem as a national priority area, Israeli press reported.

Among other financial benefits, the proposal would give priority to construction in Jerusalem, including in occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli news site Ynet said. Further, the bill’s creators said it would lead to an increase in the number of Jews in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of their state, Ynet reported.

MK Uri Ariel, who proposed the bill, said it would lead to “a change in the demographic balance” of the city. The bill has secured wide-spread support in the Knesset, where it will face a preliminary vote on Wednesday, the report added.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly denounced what they say is a policy of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. President Mahmoud Abbas told leaders at a recent Arab League summit that home demolitions, evictions, land confiscation, and settlement building had become daily occurrences in the city.

Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem following the 1967 war, a move not recognized by the international community. The UN considers East Jerusalem to be under occupation, and recently condemned Israel’s settlement enterprise in the area as a violation of international law. The fate of Jerusalem is one of the six final-status issues to be agreed in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

UN envoy Richard Falk said Friday that “the extension of the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem by way of unlawful settlements, house demolitions, revocations of Palestinian residence rights, makes it increasingly difficult to envisage a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.”

Israel’s recent approval of 240 new housing units in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem was denounced by the international community. The US conveyed its “disappointment” to Israel over the move, which US State Department spokesman Philip J Crowley described as “contrary to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces handed several demolition notices to Palestinian families on Sunday in Al-Bustan in Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Head of the committee defending Silwan homes Fakhri Abu Diab said a large force of Israeli border guards ransacked the area, using homes as vantage points to fire tear-gas canisters, stun-grenades and rubber bullets “in all directions.”

October 24, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | 3 Comments

The ‘Torture’ Hypocrisy of the New York Times

By Scott Horton | Harpers | July 1, 2010

Has the newspaper of record adopted a double standard for torture techniques—using the “t”-word when the techniques are applied by other nations, but using more evasive characterizations when agents of the United States government are in the spotlight? That question has now been authoritatively settled, and the answer is a resounding “yes.”

A new study by Harvard’s Kennedy School (PDF) looks systematically at how American print media characterized the use of waterboarding in incidents reported from 1903 (the famous case of Major Glenn, coming out of the Philippines) to the present day. Here’s the crux of their conclusions:

Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture. In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.

The way newspapers characterize practices like waterboarding has an immediate impact on the attitudes adopted by their readers. Accepting the language suggested by the Bush Administration (“enhanced interrogation techniques”) helped build public acceptance for the application of torture techniques. Victor Klemperer, in his masterful study of the manipulation of language in Germany from the thirties to the end of World War II, called such phrases “little doses of arsenic: they are consumed without being noticed; they seem at first to have no effect, but after a while, indeed, the effect is there.”

In his impressive attempt to catalogue these “doses of arsenic,” Klemperer awards pride of place to the words used by the state to describe prisoners, prison camps, and the treatments to which they were subjected. Indeed, one of the phrases developed in this era is still with us today. In special circumstances and usually only with the permission of higher authorities, interrogators were permitted to use a set of highly coercive techniques on prisoners, including hypothermia and stress positions. These techniques were called verschärfte Vernehmung: “enhanced interrogation.”

But as George Orwell pointed out in his essay “Politics and the English Language,” the process of language manipulation was hardly reserved to the Axis powers during the war. He wrote two novels that focused instead on the same sort of word games that Klemperer documented, drawing on the Soviet Union as an example. And he was convinced that the same malicious force was at work in the English language:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them… if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

So waterboarding in the hands of the Japanese, the Khmer Rouge, East Germans, Brazilians, and Argentinians is “torture,” the American newspapers tell us, but indistinguishable techniques when used with the authority of the American government are simply “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that “critics” “refer to as torture.” This is unalloyed hypocrisy. And it has social and political consequences far beyond the nuanced semantics that fill the columns of the public editor. It is shaping a darker, more brutal society—one prepared to accept torture as a legitimate tool in the hands of the state.

© The Harper’s Magazine Foundation

October 24, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

France paralyzed as strikes enter day 12

Sarkozy’s approval rating has dropped below 30 percent
Press TV – October 24, 2010

Protesters in France decry Paris’ pension reforms for the 12th straight day, as the country witnesses its worst strikes and civil disobedience in 15 years.

“Just because an unjust law has been passed does not mean we passively accept it. All we wanted was discussions on how to improve the law. Even that was denied us. Now we are calling for its suspension,” The Hindu quoted Francois Chereque of the CFDT trade union as saying on Sunday.

Labor unions have called for two more strikes on next Thursday and November 6th to protest against the country’s pension reforms. A similar call brought millions of people into the streets early this week.

According to the AFP, the unions say they will continue to call on their workers and other French citizens to keep protesting until the French President Nicolas Sarkozy negotiates with them.

The French Upper House passed Sarkozy’s reform bill last Friday, raising the minimum retirement age two years, to 62 and full retirement from 65 to 67.

A joint parliamentary commission is to meet next week to give its final approval to the law, considered a mere formality.

The bill has sparked protests for more than two weeks, disrupting rail and airports services. A blockade on refineries, fuel depots and ports has also left many gas stations empty, forcing 30 percent of gas stations in the French capital of Paris to shut down.

Strikes at France’s oil refineries, which began in Marseille in September, caused panic buying and nationwide shortages.

Marseille, France’s oldest city, has been crippled by the walkouts. Protesters have barricaded roads leading to Marseille Airport, forcing passengers to abandon their cars and drag suitcases to the terminal on foot to catch flights.

A fleet of huge ships, cruising offshore, are unable to dock in the southern coastal city as railway staff and dock workers join the strikes.

A recent public opinion poll by a French television network showed that nearly 70 percent of French citizens support the ongoing strikes.

The French government has said on numerous occasions that the reform is needed to save the indebted pension system from collapse.

October 24, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | 1 Comment

Pelosi’s ‘progressive,’ antiwar challenger is also… pro-Israel

By Matthew Taylor | Mondoweiss | October 23, 2010

Here in San Francisco, progressives are furious with Nancy Pelosi for enabling the Bush war machine, Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan, and her utter disdain for (our crappy definition of) democracy, as she has refused to debate her libertarian Republican opponent John Dennis. Although his is clearly a Quixotic campaign, Dennis is running to Pelosi’s left (to some extent) and picking up support from across the political spectrum, including, quite shockingly, former Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez.

Gonzalez is a progressive icon who nearly became the first Green Party Mayor of a major American city in 2003, when he picked up 47% of the vote. He was also Nader’s VP running mate in 2008. Gonzalez’s passionate endorsement of Dennis, in an open letter to Pelosi:

Even your most ardent supporters are at a loss to defend your escalation of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan after you became Speaker (despite your promises to end the war), and for your support for the Patriot Act, its subsequent reauthorization, and for your support for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among other things…

Although you may want to dismiss your congressional opponent John Dennis because he is a Republican, I assure you that he is a serious candidate with views worthy of consideration. In addition to being firmly anti-war and committed to defending civil liberties, Dennis is pro-gay rights, opposed the Wall Street bailouts and has joined in the populist call challenging the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve…

As with virtually every politician in America, it turns out John Dennis’ progressivism has a limit. I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an “I” ends with an “L” and has “obliviousness to racist ethnic cleansing and illegal colonization” in the middle.

Check out Dennis’ comments on Israel at 4:40 of this video. The upshot: he wants to not only continue to dole out six billion in military funding to Israel every year, he insists that Israel should be able to build unlimited settlements/colonies, and the U.S. has absolutely no right to criticize what Israel does with the U.S. guns.

John Dennis, where’s the limit? What would Israel have to do with U.S. guns for you to say, “too far”? Outright genocide?

I love Matt Gonzalez – worked on his campaign, in fact – but Gonzalez totally blew it on this one. Gonzalez should run against Pelosi instead of handing out endorsements to pro-Israel sycophants like candy. Gonzalez might actually win.

October 23, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

More bogus claims burried in wikileaks ‘Iraq war logs’

IslamTimes | October 23, 2010:

‘The documents seem to paint a picture that very much favours official U.S. positions on the Iraq war. For example, the American media, which has a well documented history of shilling for the U.S. government highlighted two stories that it supposedly extrapolated from these documents. The first was the fact that the majority of civilian casualties in the Iraq war were caused by Iraqis. This directly contradicts a comprehensive study conducted by John Hopkins University in 2004. It found that “coalition” forces killed over 600,000 Iraqis, the majority of them killed in airstrikes. The leaked documents conveniently contradict this information.

The second major story emanating from the “leaks” is that Iran was actively destabilizing Iraq by funding militants who were assassinating Iraqi officials. One AFP story even highlights the accusation that Iran tried to launch a poison gas attack on the “green zone,” an area where Iraqi and American officials are based. Another factor that makes this “leak” highly suspect is that the Times, a newspaper that played a leading role in validating the illegal invasion of Iraq and is well known for its pro Zionist policy, was one of “few” media outlets that was given “early” access to these “leaked” documents. This meant that the Times was able to weave a narrative around the leaked documents that was then picked up by all the major networks.

The fact that the supposedly damaging leaks are in fact bolstering American accusations against Iran while minimizing American complicity in Iraqi deaths leads some to believe that the leaks are in fact engineered by the Pentagon to either discredit Wikileaks, or are in conjunction with Wikileaks which is a U.S. government outfit.’

Comment by a.h.k:

This builds on the ‘Afghan war diaries’, where wikileaks, and whoever really owns them, accuses Iran of aiding the taliban and other insurgent groups in the country.

October 23, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The Democratic-Likud Party

October 22, 2010 by Alex Kane

Ynetnews.com today publishes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “list of millionaires,” a group of people Netanyahu identified as potential donors to him ahead of the 2007 primary elections in Israel.

What’s important about the list of donors that Netanyahu identified is what it says about the Israel lobby and the Democratic Party in the United States.  It goes a long way in explaining why hard-right Zionist views can be found among Democratic politicians.

There is little to no difference between how Democrats and Republicans in the United States act towards Israel; criticizing Israel is a “third rail” in American politics, and some of the donors included on this list show why.

It makes sense why this is the case with the Republican Party, as the ideology of neoconservatism and military interventionism is a core part of the party, and matches up nicely with Likud’s way of looking at the world and, in particular, the Palestinians.  But with the slightly more rational and liberal Democratic Party, which captured the House and Senate in 2006 in part because of growing opposition to the Iraq War, it makes less sense.

That is, until you look at some of the donors who Netanyahu reasonably thought may give him money and notice that at least a couple are heavy contributors to the Democratic Party.

Among the potential donors listed are Haim Saban and Mortimer Zuckerman.

Saban is a wealthy ”entertainment mogul” whose “greatest concern is to protect Israel” and who is “one of the largest individual donors to the Democratic Party,” according to a May 2010 profile of him in the New Yorker.  The profile notes that “in 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee—one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party.”  But his political views match up with the Israeli right-wing, a decidedly illiberal set of viewpoints.

From Marwan Bishara’s blog on Al Jazeera, here’s Saban in his own words, taken from a 2006 interview with Ha’aretz:

On his worries for Israel:

“… Israel does not worry me. Israel’s neighbours worry me … History proved that Sharon was right and I was wrong. In matters relating to security, that moved me to the right. Very far to the right.”

On Iran:

“The Iranians are serious. They mean business. Ahmadinejad is not a madman.

“When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language. His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal. And for a religious person of deep self-persuasion, that supreme goal is worth the liquidation of five-and-a-half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that.

“Nuclear weapons in the hands of a religious leadership that is convinced that the annihilation of Israel will bring about the emergence of a new Muslim caliphate? Israel cannot allow that. This is no game. It’s truly an existential danger.”

On the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran:

“Is there a higher price than two nuclear bombs on Israel? So they will fire missiles, all right then. Iran is not Lebanon, where you pinpoint specific targets: this bridge here, that building, half of that courtyard over there. In Iran you go in and wipe out their infrastructure completely. Plunge them into darkness. Cut off their water.”

“Would I prefer a defence minister who is capable of looking at a map and saying, ‘Half a division here, two divisions there, send the commandos from the north and let the navy hit from the south’? Yes, I would prefer that. Because to negotiate with management on behalf of the unions is a skill, but it’s a different skill from planning a war. In our situation, for all time, at least in our lifetime, we need a defence minister who has a thorough understanding of these subjects.”

Zuckerman is a media mogul who owns the New York Daily News and is the editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report, and is a major contributor to the Democratic Party, according to the Center for Reponsive Politics’ Open Secrets website.  He is a former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and espouses hawkish views when it comes to the Palestinians.  For instance, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Zuckerman calls Jerusalem ”its capital” and refers to the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem as a “Jewish suburb.”

The Democratic Party is beholden to people like Zuckerman and Saban, who were listed as potential donors to a right-wing Israeli political party whose official platform states that Likud “rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

No wonder Likudnik views get play within the supposedly liberal party in American politics.

October 23, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | 2 Comments

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